Additive Manufacturing Materials

Additive Manufacturing Materials

SME’s Additive Manufacturing Seminar Series will stop in Long Beach, CA on September 25, 2019. Co-located with the WESTEC Event, this seminar will focus on how major manufacturers and suppliers have transformed their operations by embracing Additive Manufacturing with a focus on materials used to produce production-ready parts. At the seminar, industry experts will be on hand to discuss how they are implementing the technology and present various case studies with real life examples of how AM is transforming traditional manufacturing. Hear how the materials used in additive manufacturing are ever changing and how metals, polymers and advanced composites are utilized in a variety of additive manufacturing technologies. Learn about processing parameters, design considerations, typical defects you find in metals, aluminum, super alloys and many things in between.

Metal 3D printing has the power to redefine the way companies design and produce metal parts, ushering in the 4th Industrial Revolution and delivering on the promise of additive manufacturing. What will parts look like in 2020? New levels of complexity with metal 3D printing and generative design; 30-50% lighter, greener and using less materials; mass customization to each local market, built without tooling and to an inventory of one, are just some of the dramatic changes on the horizon. This session explores metal 3D printing technology for functional prototyping and low volume production through real customer applications and key use cases. From the architecture and components to the performance and cost-per-part benefits, hear how companies are integrating metal 3D printing into their product development to improve upon part properties, performance, fabrication times and costs.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has experienced annual double digit growth rates over the last decade and continues to thrive. There have been early industry adopters for using AM in production such as medical and aerospace industries, but other industries have been more conservative and are starting to explore AM. As new AM technologies further increase process speed, they will help reduce costs while providing a wider array of materials for these and other industries.

New standards are being developed to help qualify the AM processes for production environments and are already being accepted by governing organizations such as the FAA and FDA. Examples of new applications include aerospace, oil and gas, medical, and automotive; industries for which standards developed are being implemented. I will go into detail on the new technologies and applications.

As aerospace components, such as rocket engine combustion chambers and heat exchangers, continue to increase in size, additive manufacturing processes must have capabilities that can scale to full-production geometries. The laser metal deposition/directed energy deposition process provides sizes far beyond the current state-of-the-art direct metal laser sintering (DMLS). The current state-of-the-art methods for fabricating full-size aerospace components, such as heat exchangers, typically require the use of forgings, which often possess lead times of 5-6 months. To achieve the end product, these forgings still require difficult post-processing with the required cooling channels, which adds to the total lead-time and increased the risk of errors. Laser-based additive manufacturing is an alternative, single-step method for producing complex, multi-material, dense or porous, near net-shape parts that out-perform their traditionally manufactured equivalents with enhanced properties.

This presentation will review laser-based additive manufacturing as an alternative method for producing complex near net-shape parts, review the laser metal deposition process used to build a rocket nozzle demonstrator component for NASA, discuss the enhanced properties that can be achieved with the process, and display a sample rocket nozzle demonstrator component for participants to view and touch.

The First Aligned Composite Technology Designed for Mass ProductionRiley Reese ,CTO, Arris CompositesRead More

At higher strength and lower density than titanium, carbon fiber composites hold the potential to change the world by unlocking novel design architectures that deliver unparalleled performance at lighter weights. Despite this potential, the complexity and cost of designing and manufacturing these anisotropic materials have limited their use to high-end, niche applications. 3D printing has unlocked new design capabilities but is still limited in production speed and volume. To address the scalability problem of 3D printing and the steep costs of composite manufacturing, a new process has been developed. The resulting parts are produced cost-effectively in high volumes with precisely aligned fibers that outperform both machined and 3D printed metal.

Additive manufacturing systems of all kinds have seen significant increases in productivity improvement in recent years. In laser powder bed fusion technology the increase has been gained through development of multiple laser systems in combination with higher power lasers. In general, increasing the number of lasers from one to two lasers close-to halves the build time, while adding more lasers even further reduces the build time. Increasing the process productivity is critical to creating opportunities for applications that were previously considered uneconomical. Successful development of reliable and robust parameters that are capable of producing quality material throughout the machine can be a considerable challenge, especially when combined with the ever-increasing demand for new materials, larger machines, and higher build rates. This presentation will discuss the parameters and capabilities for several materials and discuss the increased productivity achievable. Additional results will be shared demonstrating the latest developments in high productivity parameters with significantly increased build rates with a focus on titanium and aluminum.

Made of the Right Stuff: The Significance of Materials Selection and Development in Additive ManufacturingDr. Behrang Poorganji, Director of Materials Technology, GE AdditiveRead More

Additive manufacturing technologies are revolutionizing not only modern component design but also materials evolution across many industries. Direct Metal Laser Melting (DMLM) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM) processes are fundamentally working based on the solid to liquid, and liquid to solid phase transformations in each process layer. Understanding the relationships among materials, process, and final part performance are the key and crucial concepts to the adoption of these additive manufacturing methods. The powder characteristics, evolution of microstructure through additive manufacturing and subsequent post-processing is primarily responsible for material performance. In design-for-additive manufacturing and control materials response in additive manufacturing we need a deeper, and better understanding of powder characteristics, solid-liquid phase transformation as well as the metallurgical phenomena of repeated thermal processing cycles and post processing. This talk will illustrate GE Additive vision around criticality of materials evolution and significance of understanding fundamental metallurgical phenomena including phase transformation in the broader spectrum of the powder bed fusion processes.

This presentation will cover additive manufacturing (AM) capabilities at Lockheed Martin and discuss some of Lockheed’s applications for AM. It will highlight results a project to develop a metallic AM fighter component including some of the lessons learned from the effort.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Corporate executives and business owners, product design and research & development professionals, design engineers, manufacturing engineers and managers, software developers, investors and entrepreneurs and others interested in utilizing additive manufacturing technologies to streamline design and production, reduce time to market, and build more efficient products and operations.

*Academic, Military & Government Pricing: To qualify for the reduced rate you must submit a letter on appropriate military/government letterhead signed by your Commanding Officer or supervisor to the SME Registrar. Educators may submit either a letter on university letterhead signed by the dean or registrar confirming status or a class schedule inclusive of the institution/year/instructor.

**Full-Time Students: To qualify for student rates, submit a letter on university letterhead signed by the dean or registrar confirming full-time student status or provide a copy of your student I.D. to the SME Registrar.